Category: Chicago

I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Between Administration with a minor in Computer Science. I received my degree using a lot of hard work, tuition reimbursement, and student loans. I’m telling you all of this, because I firmly believe in student loans. I believe the rates should be kept low and I believe the government should back them.

Thus is NOT how Senator Ron Johnson feels. He thinks we shouldn’t have student loans. He has actually voted against legislation regarding student loans. (He, also, thinks it is perfectly fine to not do his job and vote on President Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee, but that’s just another reason to not support him.)

Johnson is up for re-election against Feingold. He and his PACs are running a lot of ads against Feingold and telling you how wonderful he is.

Don’t believe them.

Anyone who doesn’t want to find a way to help our young become educated, really isn’t into helping our nation. Look up Johnson’s remarks on how a Ken Burns Documentary should be used to teach college instead of teachers creating curriculums.

When you vote in November, make sure to not vote for Johnson. He’s bad for both Wisconsin and our country.

If the budget was all about balance and not destroying unions, then why – as a friend put it – did “Walker and his henchmen” pull the collective bargaining rights out and pass it?

I’ll tell you why. This isn’t about our great state. It is about Governor Walker making his friends over at Koch Industries happy. Watch who takes over our state owned energy assets and then ask yourself if this was about a balanced budget.

Worse – he campaigned on how he will create jobs. I don’t see anything in this budget that has created one job.

We’ve all seen the news stories this week. In fact, the entire nation has seen the shame brought upon our great state by our Republican legistlature and Governor.
Our state is the birthplace of national unions and our newly elected governor wants to eliminate the right of the majority of our public workers to collective bargin. I say majority because Walker has left out police officers and fire fighters. Lucky them.

Our public workers are not fat cat CEOs. These people represent working families of this state. I’m for public workers paying for 12.6% of their health care, but half of their pensions is a little too tough. Still, there wouldn’t be quite is outrage if the governor and his elected hunchmen didn’t go too far and try to take away their bargaining rights. Eliminating collective bargaining isn’t going to create jobs or save the state money.
Walker and his cronies are shocked and surprised at the outrage, but they haven’t backed down.

That’s what happens with our Wisconsin Republicans – they just want to forge ahead and claim that they care about their constituents. I think the protests are proving that they could give a care about any of us.

One last thought, I’d like to point out from personal experience just how little public workers make compared to those of us in the private sector. A few years ago, I was searching for a new job and the Racine Police Department needed a data analyst. My resume fit the job perfectly and I didn’t apply. Why you ask. Because it paid $11,000 less than what I was all ready making. This is a perfect example of how little our public workers get paid vs those of us in the private sector.

Call your Senators and the Governor – tell them that you support our public workers.

The way the media made last November’s election sound, you would think that our newly elected officials were actually going to do the right thing. Instead, the people who were elected promising to bring jobs to Wisconsin passed the bill lowering the standard for the minimum auto insurance – a passing that will not actually lower anyone’s premiums. There was nothing in there that said the insurance companies would actually have to lower rates.
I’m mad because I have carried extra insurance for years. The raising of the minimums meant good news for me. If I am injured in an auto accident, I’ll be covered by my own and by the offenders insurance. The minimums that were in place were such that in the case of a serious accident, I shouldn’t lose my house if I can’t work. Well, no more.
Thanks a lot, elected officials. Thanks for nothing.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is in Washington a bipartisan effort rejected an extension of the poorly named Patroit Act.
Both the White House and the GOP leadership are upset by this, but I don’t care. It needed to be done.
Now, let’s move on to creating some jobs!